Thursday, November 28, 2013

A couple of years
ago, Jerry Bowyer, writing in Forbes Magazine,
recounted the real significance of Thanksgiving, a significance that is too
often lost among the turkey dinners, football games, and stories about Indians
who befriended the early settlers.

In 1620, the Plymouth
pilgrims based their original community on Plato’s Republic, a collective model that appealed to their religious
convictions and morality. But the communal model didn’t work for them. After over
two years of failing harvests and resulting malnutrition, disease, starvation, and
deaths, the pilgrims replaced the communal model with a model based on private
property. The ensuing harvest was abundant, with surpluses available for trade.

Their Thanksgiving celebrated
the triumph of the individual, private property, and incentive, over
collectivism. At first, the pilgrims were guilty because they were putting
self-interest over the seeming altruism of socialism. Yet the devout survivors had learned two lessons:
1) that a theoretical and utopian collective society fails, and (2) in real life, private property
and capitalism produce prosperity. For them, God, not Plato, knew best. Accepting
the principles of private property and self-interest was God’s way of
harnessing self-interest to the greater good. We know all of this because an
elder of the Plymouth plantation, William Bradford, kept a journal and it
survives today. Mr. Bowyer’s earlier article, with additional historical
background, is here.)

It’s wrong to say that American was founded by capitalists. In
fact, America was founded by socialists who had the humility to learn from
their initial mistakes and embrace freedom. One of the earliest and arguably
most historically significant North American colonies was Plymouth Colony,
founded in 1620 in what is now known as Plymouth, Massachusetts. As I’ve
outlined in greater detail here before (Lessons From a Capitalist Thanksgiving), the original
colony had written into its charter a system of communal property and labor.

As William Bradford recorded in his Of Plymouth Plantation, a people
who had formerly been known for their virtue and hard work became lazy and
unproductive. Resources were squandered, vegetables were allowed to rot on the
ground and mass starvation was the result. And where there is starvation, there
is plague. After 2 1/2 years, the leaders of the colony decided to abandon
their socialist mandate and create a system which honored private property. The
colony survived and thrived and the abundance which resulted was what was celebrated
at that iconic Thanksgiving feast.

As my friendReuven
Brennerhas taught me,
history is a series of experiments: The Human Gamble. Some gambles work and are
adopted by history and some do not and should be abandoned by it. The problem
is that the human gamble only works if there is a record of experimental
outcomes and if decision makers consult that record. For many years, the story
of the first failed commune of Plymouth Bay was part of the collective memory
of American students. But Progressive Education found that story unhelpful and
it has fallen into obscurity, which explains why (as I alluded to before) a
well-educated establishment figure like Jared Bernstein would be unaware of it.

I’m often asked why our current
leadership class forgets the lessons of the past so often. They are, after all,
very smart men and women. Don’t they know that collectivism will fail?

No, they
don’t. Not anymore. For much of our history, our leaders were educated in the
principles which were to help them avoid errors once they have joined the
ruling class. They studied to learn how to not misuse power. Now our leaders
learn nothing of the dangers of abusing power: their education is entirely
geared to its acquisition. All of their neurons are trained on that one
objective – to get to the top. What they do when they get there is a matter for
later. And what happens to the country when they’re done with their experiments
is beside the point: after all, their experiments will not really affect them
personally. History is the story of the limitations of human power. But the
limits of power is a topic for people who doubt themselves and their right to
rule, not the self-anointed.

That’s how
it is now, and that’s how it was in 1620. The charter of the Plymouth Colony
reflected the most up-to-date economic, philosophical and religious thinking of
the early 17th century. Plato was in vogue then, and Plato believed in central
planning by intellectuals in the context of communal property, centralized
state education, state centralized cultural offerings and communal family
structure. For Plato, it literally did take a village to raise a child. This
collectivist impulse reflected itself in various heretical offshoots of
Protestant Christianity with names like The True Levelers, and the Diggers,
mass movements of people who believed that property and income distinctions
should be eliminated, that the wealthy should have their property expropriated
and given to what we now call the 99%. This kind of thinking was rife in the
1600s and is perhaps why the Pilgrim settlers settled for a charter which did
not create a private property system.

But the
Pilgrims learned and prospered. And what they learned, we have forgotten and we
fade. Now, new waves of ignorant masses flood into parks and public
squares. New Platonists demand control of other people’s property. New True
Levelers legally occupy the prestige pulpits of our nation, secular and sacred.
And now, as then, the productive class of our now gigantic,
colony-turned-superpower, learn and teach again, the painful lessons of
history. Collectivism violates the iron laws of human nature. It has always
failed. It is always failing, and it will always fail. I thank God that it is
failing now. Providence is teaching us once again.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The below post from the Cleveland Leader is written by Roldo Bartimole. Roldo was a long time writer for Free Times magazineRoldo may be left of Tea Party thinking -- but be it Republicans or Democrats, Roldo has always been an outspoken critic of the corporate cronyism and sweetheart deals given to the same corporate interests and non-profits that have been continually fleecing the residents of Cuyahoga County for many years.That being said -- when it comes to knowledge on the inside players, relationships and back room dealing in Cuyahoga County, by far, if Roldo writes it - you can be sure it is accurate.While Cuyahoga County residents blindly supported a County Reform, we see the same business groups & non-profits that pushed the County Reform, are still fleecing the residents. But now, instead of it being through the County Commissioners - it is now through Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald and Cuyahoga County Council....

Our sleepy news media and non-existent citizen action will soon be costing residents of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County very Big Bucks. In the hundreds of millions. Almost all from our dispirited hard-pressed people.As the Plain Dealer, WKYC, WEWS, WJW and WOIO feed us more sports, weather and crime, our real community decisions go unattended - bombs ready to explode. Our reformed County government quietly has set explosives of tax revenue no one wants to notice.TRY THESE THREE MOVES THAT SHOULD MAKE ALL NERVOUS:- We have now built a huge convention center with no guarantee that it will do anything but cost us tax revenue. Expect a big money loser despite the propaganda.- We have built and must operate a medical mart (I don't care what new name it's given) that will cost us money to operate with no guarantee of paying its bills.- Most disturbing, County Executive Ed Fitzgerald (who will be long gone) and his County Council have indebted County residents to build at taxpayer expense the largest hotel (600-650 rooms) in Cleveland at a public cost of $270,330,000. If only. The County will own this hotel and I guarantee it will LOSE MONEY. Year after year.The city also has committed $8 million so far. The hotel will keep another $7,680,000 in our 8 percent sales tax for itself. And there will be more tax gifts. You can bet on it.Of course, all this takes place with NO public vote.The public? Screw them. Indeed. There has been little discussion. Why discuss what's already decided behind closed doors?And who did the study for this hotel? Something called PFK Consulting. Who did PFK work for?Positively Cleveland (PC). The convention bureau promoters. Who provides millions of dollars a year to Positively Cleveland? Cuyahoga County. Via bed taxes.It's a totally fixed game.The County provided this so-called non-profit PC $6,285,952 in 2011. It does similarly every year. Meanwhile, its private members, who benefit from the hefty tax gift, only contributed $532,206, or about 8 percent of PC's budget.Positively Cleveland paid its 2011 boss Dennis Roche $359,692, latest IRS figure. Not too shabby, huh? Five others are paid more than $100,000 a year. David Gilbert is now the president and CEO.To build the hotel, the County had to move its main offices and knock the building down at Lakeside & Ontario, an especially prime real estate spot.At the same time, the County destructs its old offices, it give the land to the hotel project AND has to rent new space for a new County Headquarter until it gets new offices. New offices will be built on property the County once owned and lost millions of dollars purchasing from Dick Jacobs. Favor just never stop.Such deals are made in heaven. For developers. Taxpayers pick up the costs.The County will then rent from the new developer at $6.7 million a year, or $67 million for a 10 year period. No telling how much it will cost for this move or how much other space the County will require to rent or buy.These are decisions no one really knows real the true costs will be over time.We do know the public - you - will pay.Another great scam is in the waiting. Before sticking the knife in, however, our public officials will wait until next year. Even they know they're asking voters for too much this year.Our new, presumably honest County leaders will be ready to extend the sin tax another $200 million for at least 20 more years for our needy sports chiselers. I'll bet the Dolans, Haslams and Gilberts are privately upset they have to stand in line until next year.Taxes are very easy to level. Especially when they are leveled on someone else.That's you, in case you haven't picked up the gist of this.We have already (as I've been telling year after year) now collected $240 million for the first sin tax for our sports entrepreneurs since 1990. We added another $110,424,933 (as of Sept. 30) for the second term of sin taxes for Browns Stadium.The next bite will be for 20 years or some $220 million (likely much more as sales-taxed prices rise).For a grand total of at least $570 million. Not counting free property taxes, free team parking privileges and other gifts along the way.Is there anything left of the private sector in Cleveland? Do any big shots pay any of the freight? Ever? They only raise seat prices and cling to low wages for workers.The party hardly stops there. We seem to be flush with give-away cash. Amid poverty and joblessness, too.We will still be paying the medical mart/convention center one-quarter percent sales tax (thanks Tim Hagan) until 2028. Fifteen more years. Unless they extend, surely a well-worn habit. As of the end of this September it has cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers $242,148,943. See how a quarter-percent can add up. It is costing consumers more than the $40 million a year now.And as prices of goods keep inflating, it's likely to flirt with the $1 billion mark.Where do you think these dribs and drabs of hundreds of millions of dollars - with no end in sight - come from?YOU! By the nickel and dime.You know it comes most regressively from the least of us. You know the Romney 47 percent. The takers, he said.Mitt told us just how these people think and operate:“There are 47 percent of the people … who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims. … These are people who pay no income tax. … and so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”Personal responsibility? What a joke.The 47 percent may not pay much or any income taxes since they have no or little income. But they pay all those sales taxes on all the products they need for themselves and their children.And as Republican policies keep crushing the poor, Democrats essentially sit back and wring their hands. And give more subsidies to the wealthy.Cuyahoga County politicians - the Ed Fitzgeralds and the Ellen Connollys and the rest of the County Council - are willing to look the other way.NO BETTER THAN MITT ROMNEY.These issues are grinding people down. This is a good part of the reason we have so many desperate people doing so many desperate acts.Parts of the town remind me a book I just read, "The Last Man in Russia," which describes the disintegration of so much of the former Soviet Union where desperation led to dire population loss, heavy drunkenness and early deaths. The recent data on infant deaths in some areas of Cleveland have fallen below that of many Third World countries, to say nothing of the devastating conditions women in many parts of the city endure.But we collected another $119,124,658 as of Sept. 30 (since February 2007) for arts and culture.There is no special tax for needy infants.Why are we not getting news of what is happening to people suffering in the economic vise? We certainly aren't at a loss for publicity (news?) about new beers or restaurants? Is that now the duty of journalists? To keep us alert to new beers?Where is the fairness? Where are those leaders who speak for these needs?Our priorities are sharply out of whack.Aren't there enough people here who are tired of these top business and political leaders riding high? Are there reporters willing not to look the other way, willing not to give us ball scores and the weather reports instead of the brutal truth of everyday life here?It's time to say, "NO!" to some of these politicians and their string-pullers at our foundations, at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, and on our top institutional boards. They are the problem, not the solution.

WASHINGTON, November 25, 2013 — Scandals and embarrassments don’t slow down President Obama like they would other politicians. Instead, Obama is speeding-up his effort to re-shape America to match his vision.His collapsing support in national polls has shortened the time that Obama has to act. Just as a football team uses a hurry-up offense when time is short, Obama goes with bold and high-risk efforts. Unlike a football team, Obama gets the rules changed to help him win.Democratic Senators have given Obama the power to behave even more dictatorially than he has already. Changing the Senate rules was crucial to approving Obama’s appointments for key positions:

to make rules and regulations through the executive branch, by-passing Congress

to have those rules and regulations upheld by Obama appointees in the courts

to control key positions even after Obama leaves office (like Janet Yellen to run the Federal Reserve and lifetime federal judges)

to protect Obama’s veil of secrecy from threats, such as by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said he would block nominees until witnesses were made available on the Benghazi terrorist attack

The Senate rules change is not the only sign of Obama’s hurry-up offense, however:

The White House readily took the heat for its blatant political move of extending an Obamacare deadline so people won’t get more premium “sticker shock” until just after next year’s elections. As Congressman Steve Stockman, R-Texas, tweeted, “Just a few weeks ago even suggesting moving Obamacare deadlines was ‘arson’ and ‘terrorism.’ Now it’s White House policy.”

Last week Obama couldn’t spare three hours to go to Gettysburg for the national commemoration of Lincoln’s great speech. “Too busy” making sure the Obamacare website got fixed. This week the President is off for a three-day fund-raising trip on the West Coast.

Obama has also been reaching out and encouraging activists to engage in demonstrations for his pro-amnesty immigration reform as well as for Obamacare.

So far, the Senate rule change is the most dramatic act that allows Obama to press his agenda while he can, at the same time embedding his people in key positions to influence America’s course long after his term.That’s why Obama personally lobbied Senators to change filibuster rules. The White House won’t confirm who were the final three Senators that Obama won over, nor what may have been offered to them. The change was made to benefit Obama, not the Democrat majority in the Senate. Obama needed the endless talk of changing the rules to result in action before his window of opportunity slammed shut. Now his nominees need only 50 votes (since Vice-President Joe Biden can break any ties) for approval, not 60. The 45 Republican Senators can be disregarded.The impact is bigger than the power to appoint. All the talk about impact on future presidents and on the culture of the Senate is elitist chatter to a community organizer like Obama. It’s now that counts, to create a widening ripple effect that becomes harder for Obama’s successor to reverse. The Democratic senators gave Obama the tool for bypassing the entire Congress on a host of matters. Obama can have federal agencies issue edicts and expect his newly-appointed judges to uphold them. Only a narrowly-divided Supreme Court could block those, the same court that did not block Obamacare.The Senate did not change the 60-vote standard for Supreme Court nominees — yet. But nothing could stop Democrats from helping Obama by lowering that to a 50-vote margin if a vacancy occurred.Obama now expects to get his three nominees (Robert Wilkins, Cornelia Pillard, and Patricia Ann Millet) approved immediately for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has jurisdiction over most appeals involving federal rules and regulations. That gives Obama appointees control of that all-important court, whose rulings can be reversed only by the Supreme Court. It’s his protection for the aggressive regulatory agenda that is on its way from Obama’s executive branch.Obama appointees will saturate America with stringent new environmental restrictions, requirements to make bad loans to the “under-privileged,” dictates to hire people regardless of criminal records, gender identity rules on schools and businesses, more social engineering, and plenty more that is being overshadowed for now by the attention given to the Obamacare mess.Undoing the damage done by Obama’s fast-tracked appointees may be as tricky as undoing Obamacare. Once millions of pre-existing individual policies have been cancelled, and soon millions more of pre-existing group policies are cancelled, how can they be brought back? Once millions of people rely on Obamacare subsidies and expanded Medicaid, how can it be taken away?The public realization of Obama’s deceptions is only an opportunity; not a reversal. As Winston Churchill once explained, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. “We should not be fooled by efforts to create an image of a president who is chastened and humbled by the blunders of Obamacare. Some conservatives are celebrating as though Obama’s agenda is toast. They should know better. The tenacity of Obama and his loyalists is immense.Obama’s loyal bureaucrats are hard at work. He is organizing his community for his next wave: rallying activists, urging the left to launch protests, and hoping to catch everyone else off-guard. The rest of us would like to relax during the holidays. It would be a bad mistake to expect that Obama’s people will.

Sunday, November 24, 2013

In utilizing provisions set forth in the U.S. Constitution (Article I Section 10), Ohio took another step closer to shedding the federal chains of Obamacare.Giving Sponsor testimony in the OH House State & Local Government Committee on HB 227, the Health Care Compact, Rep. Wes Retherford & Rep. Terry Boose did an excellent job explaining the fiscal & legislative benefits and freedoms that will be gained by passing the HCC and becoming a member state. To read Rep. Retherford's testimony - click here / to read Rep. Boose's testimony - click here.Already passed in eight states and introduced in nine more, including Ohio, the Health Care Compact, when approved by Congress, will allow the member states to completely remove themselves from the train wreck of Obamacare.Legislatively, the HCC will allow member states to draft and pass healthcare related legislation task specific to the needs of their state....

Enters Ohio into the Health Care Compact, which, with the permission of the United States Congress, allows Ohio, as a member state, to suspend the operation of all federal laws, rules, regulations, and orders regarding health care that are inconsistent with Ohio laws adopted pursuant to the Compact.The bill enacts and ratifies the Health Care Compact which, with the permission of the United States Congress, allows Ohio, as a member state, to regulate health care within the state (particularly, insurance), and to enter into the Compact with any other state that has legally joined in the Compact.From OLSC Bill Analysis

Financially, the HCC will bring our state dollars back to the state free of federal strings that will allow them to be spent in a manner that best suits the healthcare needs of Ohio residents....

Member states get an amount of money from the federal government each year to pay for health care. The funding is mandatory spending, and not subject to annual appropriations.

Each state’s funding is based on the federal funds spent in their state on health care in 2010. Each state will confirm their funding before joining this Compact. This funding level will be adjusted annually for changes in population and inflation.

As you can see, had the HCC been in effect, there would have been no need for Governor Kasich to expand Medicaid under Obamacare. The same funds that come with Obamcare strings attached under Governor Kasich's current Medicaid expansion would have already been allotted back to our state, as a member state of the HCC -- with NO Obamacare strings attached. While D.C. dawdles we need to start moving in a way that Constitutionally empowers the states to address the ever growing health care problems in a manner that best suits their state - as a member state, the Health Care Compact will allow Ohio to do exactly that. Please contact the below members of the OH House State & Local Government Committee and encourage them to support the HCC and putting Ohio residents back in control of the decision making process regarding our healthcare.State & Local Government Committee

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Say what you like
about Newt Gingrich, he is a savvy observer of DC politics. His recent email
message is titled, ominously, "The Death of the Senate." It’s difficult to argue
with his assessment, despite its pessimism [note: no link, since it arrived in an
email]:

No one should be
confused about what happened yesterday.

The Obama Democrats
killed the United States Senate as a deliberative body 226 years after the
Founding Fathers created it.

The use of a simple
majority to change the Senate rules and eliminate the filibuster on judicial
nominees and other appointments--a device that made getting 60 votes a
practical necessity--was a decisive first step toward reducing the Senate to a
body that operates by simple majority.

The Democrats have
tried to argue that they killed the filibuster only for a handful of
presidential nominees. But in fact they’ve killed a tradition that had survived
more than two centuries. There will be no principle to stand on to block
controversial appointments or legislation in the future.

This is a big deal,
and it will change the culture of the Senate profoundly. And the Obama
Democrats understood exactly what they were doing.

In 2005 as a senator,
Barack Obama himself said that “everyone in this chamber knows that if the
majority chooses to end the filibuster, if they choose to change the rules and
put an end to democratic debate, then the fighting, the bitterness, and the
gridlock will only get worse.”

The same year Senator
Joe Biden said, “We should make no mistake. This nuclear option is
ultimately an example of the arrogance of power. It is a fundamental power grab
by the majority party… We have been through these periods before in American
history but never, to the best of my knowledge, has any party been so bold as
to fundamentally attempt to change the structure of this body.”

He called it “the
single most important vote” he had cast during his three decades in the Senate.

He said “I pray God
when the Democrats take back control, we don't make the kind of naked power
grab you are doing.”

Senator Harry Reid
himself praised the filibuster at the time, lauding it as “far from a
procedural gimmick.” It is, he said, “part of the fabric of this institution we
call the Senate.”

That is what Senator
Reid and the other Obama Democrats destroyed yesterday, fully aware of the
permanent damage they were causing in order to achieve fleeting political goals.

That trade of
long-term stability for short-term gain is exactly the opposite of the wisdom
the framers of the Constitution intended for the Senate (a big part of the
reason the body exists in the first place). The Founders were worried that the
House, with its frequent election cycles and small Congressional districts,
would be shortsighted, easily impassioned, and unaccountable for the ultimate
consequences of their decisions.

The Senate was
supposed to guard against this danger, as a “temperate and respectable body of
citizens...to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves,
until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public
mind,” as Madison put it in Federalist 63. It would do so by making decisions
for the long term, he thought--“well-chosen and well-connected measures, which
have a gradual and perhaps unobserved operation.”

Until yesterday, the
filibuster was one such device--an important protection which for centuries had
been inviolable.

Harry Reid and the
Obama Democrats’ reckless decision to kill it will change the Senate forever.

Andrew
McCarthy’s legal analysis of the fraud taking place – before our very eyes – is at National
Review Online. Here are a few extracts, but read the
whole thing and be ready for family conversations while eating turkey:

Fraud
can be so brazen it takes people’s breath away. But for a prosecutor tasked
with proving a swindle — or what federal law describes
as a “scheme to defraud” — the crucial thing is not so much the fraud.
It is the scheme.

.
. .

President
Obama repeatedly and emphatically vowed, “If you like your health-insurance
plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan, period.” . . . Obama’s
promises were systematically deceitful. The president’s audacity is bracing,
and not just because he lies so casually while looking us in the eye. Obama
also insults our intelligence. . . . To be so bold is to say, in effect, “The
public is too ignorant and disengaged to catch me, and the press is too deep
in my pocket to raise alarms.”

.
. .

The
point of showing that Obama is carrying out a massive scheme to defraud — one
that certainly would be prosecuted if committed in the private sector — is not
to agitate for a prosecution that is never going to happen. It is to
demonstrate that there is logic to the lies. There is an objective
that the fraud aims to achieve. The scheme is the framework within which the
myriad deceptions are peddled. Once you understand the scheme, once you can
put the lies in a rational context, you understand why fraud was the
president’s only option — and why “If you like your plan, you can keep your
plan” barely scratches the surface of Obamacare’s deceit.

In
2003, when he was an ambitious Illinois state senator from a hyper-statist
district, Obama declared:

I happen to be a proponent of a
single-payer universal health-care program. I see no reason why the United
States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world,
spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot
provide basic health insurance to
everybody. . . . Everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer
health care plan, a universal health care plan. That’s what I’d like to see.
But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately.

That
is the Obamacare scheme.

It
is a Fabian plan to move an unwilling nation, rooted in free enterprise, into
Washington-controlled, fully socialized medicine. As its tentacles spread over
time, the scheme (a) pushes all Americans into government markets (a
metastasizing blend of Medicare, Medicaid, and “exchanges” run by state and
federal agencies); (b) dictates the content of the “private” insurance
product; (c) sets the price; (d) micromanages the patient access, business
practices, and fees of doctors; and (e) rations medical care. Concurrently,
the scheme purposely sows a financing crisis into the system, designed to
explode after Leviathan has so enveloped health care, and so decimated the
private medical sector, that a British- or Canadian-style “free” system —
formerly unthinkable for the United States — becomes the inexorable solution.

Once
you grasp that this is the scheme, the imperative to lull the public with
lies makes sense. Like all swindles, Obamacare cannot work if its targeted
victims figure out the endgame before it is a fait accompli.

.
. .

You
couldn’t keep your plan because Obamacare mandates made it impossible for
private insurers to offer it. . . . If your doctor is not part of the network
offered on the plans in your exchange, you will lose your doctor. To keep
costs down, exchanges will limit their
provider networks. Top doctors and hospitals are already
being cut out. Moreover, the onerous regulations,
reporting requirements, and constant threat of fee-slashing are beginning to
drive doctors out of the profession.

Then
there is the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Stanley Kurtz described the
IPAB in all its frightening detail in a 2011 National Review cover
story: “An unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic entity with nearly
limitless power over federal Medicare spending, [it] will have the power to
effectively ration health care through price controls.”

.
. .

That’s
the scheme. Or maybe you still believe that if you like your private medical
system, you can keep your private medical system, period.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Common Core is not about education. It's about indoctrination. It's about fanning the flames of racial tension and class warfare. It's about pushing the progressive agenda. The Illinois Review (via Gateway Pundit) reports:

The book - brought to the attention this week of those on the "Moms Against Duncan - MAD" Facebook page, goes on to say white Americans were hesitant to vote for a black president, and that Obama pushed the race issue to bring the nation together.

"But some people said Americans weren't ready for that much change. Sure Barack was a nice fellow, they said. But white voters would never vote for a black president. Other angry voices were raised. Barack's former pastor called the country a failure. God would damn the United States for mistreating its black citizens, he said."

And here's the image of the book.

You can look at preview pages here. Can you imagine your 9 or 10-year old having to read this in school?

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Columbus. Yesterday's hearing for the repeal of Common Core went in to the morning
hours. Although proponent testimony was cut short, and Marianne was not able to
provide my testimony regarding the intimidation tactics being used by the state,
she was able to have a one-on-one conversation with Rep. John Becker, to address some
questions he had during the testimony.

Accompanying her were three other ladies, one of whom was a teacher. She
was able to give him first hand accounts of just how terrible Common Core
Standards are.

The first testimony of the evening was given by Jane Robbins, Senior Fellow
at the American Principles Project. Her testimony was regarding the data
collection involved with the implementation of Common Core, which is very scary.
Click Here to
Watch

While Governor Kasich continues to try to justify his obsession with Medicaid Expansion, there are some in the Ohio House who believe there is a better way.

Representative Wes Retherford and Terry Boose provided sponsor testimony on the Ohio Health Care Compact today. They did a great job explaining how the Health Care Compact will give Ohioans the authority to determine what health care solution best suits them, vs. the one-size-fits-all solutions of our federal government.

Please call your representative and ask them to support the Ohio Health Care Compact HB 227

Originally promised to be proponent testimony only, Rep Stebleton has changed the proceedings to better benefit his agenda by including proponent and opponent testimony, thereby potentially limiting the time allowed for proponent testimony.

Rep Stebleton obviously believes that the more the public learns about Common Core, the more opposition there will be.

Marianne G, as well as others, have been asked to testify against Common Core, now let's see how many can actually get on the schedule.

Monday, November 18, 2013

If you are planning to go to Columbus on Wednesday for the second hearing on Common Core "standards", be sure to read Michelle Malkin’s column today to assess the testimony you hear. From Malkin's column:

While the GOP tries to solve its ills with better software and communications consultants, the conservative movement — and America — face much larger problems. It doesn’t start with the “low-information voter.” It starts with the no-knowledge student. . . . “Common Core” [is] the stealthy federal takeover of school curriculum and standards across the country. . . .

The good news is that grass-roots education and parental groups, brave teachers, and professors are fighting back.

And they’re winning. Big time. Over the last 10 months, Common Core has imploded under withering scrutiny from the tax-paying public, informed parents and educators, and more national media. States under both Republican and Democrat governors have adopted moratoria on the untested standards, withdrawn from the costly testing consortia, and retreated from partnerships with Common Core-promoting educational software data-miners like inBloom.

. . .

the nationwide revolt against Common Core’s constitutionality, costs, dubious quality, threat to local control, and privacy invasions has proponents in a panic.

. . .

Principals [in New York] reported problems with the assessments, including:

Difficult and confusing questions (some on unrelated topics).

Unnecessarily long testing sessions—“two weeks of three consecutive days of 90-minute periods”—that require more “stamina for a 10-year-old special education student than of a high school student taking an SAT exam.”

Field-test questions that do not factor into a child’s score but take up time.

Confusing directions for the English language arts sessions.

Math problems that repeatedly assess the same skill.

Multiple choice questions that ask the student to choose from the right answer and the “next best right answer.” The fact that teachers report disagreeing about which multiple-choice answer is correct in several places on the English language arts exams indicates that this format is unfair to students.

. . .

Stop Common Core moms of all colors have done their homework, brought their arguments and evidence to their school boards and state legislatures, and acted responsibly to protect their children’s best interests.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

Ohio Tea Party Patriots received word from Representative Wes Retherford that the sponsor testimony for the
Health Care Compact this Tuesday, Nov, 19th, has been moved back to 2:00 p.m.,
room number 121. Patriot drivers: Google map of the Ohio Statehouse is here.Previous information about this hearing, on this blog, is here.